Mora

My dear, sweet, precious Moragolden – you were my entry into the Iron Man challenge. But unfortunately, this is the end of an era.

Damn it Tarenar, you’re supposed to help me!

Mora died at the tender level of 42 in Eastern Plaguelands – which, of course, marks the end of her course in the Iron Man Challenge. It does not, however, mark her end completely.

You see, the Iron Man Challenge suggests that you delete your character and start over when you die. However, I’ve grown attached to Mora, created her own character and story. I can’t give up on her now. So, she’s going to be something a little different. Something I’ve nicknamed a “Tin Man”.

Because I’ve had trouble staying motivated with leveling my alts recently, I realized that making leveling one of my characters even harder is not the way to make me stay motivated. To that end, the Tin Man is basically the Iron Man with two changed rules:

The Tin Man is allowed to die. This is, of course, the biggest break away from the Iron Man, but I feel that leveling a character with heavy restrictions to combat and healing abilities, as well as the gear they can wear, is enough of a challenge in and of itself – particularly with Warlords content. The second rule helps lessen the possibility of death a little more”

The Tin Man is allowed to choose a class specialization, but not any talents, glyphs, etc. The biggest reason for me making this rule was that I want to keep playing Mora in Legion, but to do so, I’d have to do the Artifact weapons quest line, and for that I need her to have a specialization. Mostly, Druid specialization gives you a larger resource pool and a few more abilities – nothing overly game changing, and I am still restricting use of talents and glyphs.

These rules should make leveling somewhat of a challenge, but not so much so that it becomes frustrating or discouraging. Mora is currently specced Guardian and sitting at level 44, almost done in Eastern Plaguelands. I’ll keep you posted from time to time about my Tin Man’s progress! 🙂

Well, this was supposed to be out last Thursday, but I ran out of time to finish on Thursday, then my computer started acting up of Friday, and I couldn’t get it to work again until late on Saturday, and then I spent most of Sunday getting everything put back on it. Oh well – better late than never!

Anyways – now that Warlords is live, Blood Elf Models are on the way, and MMO-Champion has posted some screenshots of updates to several models, I guess it’s time for me to give a second opinion of these models. Buckle your seatbelts; you’re in for a long ride, readers.

So according to my brain, “tomorrow or the 26th” means “a month from now”. I did honestly want to get this out sooner, but between scheduling and my unparalleled ability to get distracted by everything, I just… didn’t. Oops.

In any case, I had an idea for Winter Veil this year, which I started back in July. All my girls would do their usual questing and leveling, but as they did so, they would gather presents – stuff like crafting recipes or BoE green drops – and give each other gifts in December. Of course, Hordies couldn’t send stuff to the Alliance, and vice versa, but other than that, everyone got something from someone. The fun part was that I wrapped stuff as I got it, so by the time Winter Veil rolled around, I couldn’t remember what was in every box. I was opening gifts, too!

Starting now, my Iron Man posts will be out of 10, as there is no possible way I’d get Mora to max before Warlords hits.

In any case, with school starting, I haven’t had as much time to play, but I spend most of my weekends in Azeroth. Finally, my dear, sweet, precious Moragolden dinged 40 last Friday.

I spent about 10 levels in a given zone up until 30 – from 30 to 40, I went through Arathi, Hinterlands, and about half of Western Plaguelands. Then again, I am doing most quests at green difficulty, so it’s not really that surprising that it took me a while.

Northern Lordaeron may be my favourite area to quest in post-Cata. Between Hillsbrad, Arathi, Hinterlands, Ghostlands, both Plaguelands, and Eversong, I could take every Hordie of mine through here and never get bored. In fact, I’ve leveled 5 characters through Hinterlands, and I know that I’ll be bringing at least 2 more through there later.

I’d like to get Mora up to 50 by the time Warlords hits – you know, a nice halfway checkpoint – and then focus on leveling my other girls and experiencing new content, rather than worry about leveling her to max. Now that 6.0.2 is up, I’m going to be spending a lot of time in the Barbershop, and a lot of time getting Deathdaisy through the content from this patch. Unfortunately, that means for the next few days, Mora is going to have to take a back seat.

In any case, congrats Mora for leveling, and I hope everyone has fun in 6.0.2!

With Warlords of Draenor getting ever nearer, I decided to hop on the bandwagon of many a WoW blogger: viewing their characters in their new models.

For many of my girls, this was like them getting dolled up for a night out: looking much better than they usually try to be, but still recognizable as them. Others… well, let’s just say it’s more akin to getting plastic surgery done while I was out XD.

It’s official: I have now raised an Iron Man to 1/3 of the current maximum levels. Hurrah!

You know, for all my love for both Tauren and Trolls, I… just have no love for the Barrens. I cannot stand leveling there. I’m not sure what it is, but both zones just bore me. Also, I’ve died several times doing Counterattack! , so I figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to bring a character who isn’t allowed to die out there. 🙂

And somehow, for how much I just dislike the Barrens, I adore Hillsbrad – which is weird, since a lot of people hate it post-Cata. Reasons for said hatred include:

among others, of course. Me? I love this zone, partly because it’s kind of disturbing. That’s the same reason why I like questing in Silithus: I hate any bugs in real life, but the big ones in game are fun to slaughter. There are a few things about this zone that I want to point out to everyone, and point you towards Hillsbrad for adventuring.

Welcome to the Machine – Aside from being an awesome Pink Floyd reference, this quest is one of the best Blizzard has put in. You get to be the quest giver and dispense quests to various player “stereotypes”: Dumass, the unskilled new player; Orkus, the well-geared, end-content player who’s coming back to see the changes that the Cataclysm brought; and Johnny Awesome, the alt leveling with the aid of heirlooms and the sparkle pony Celestial Steed. The characters are hilarious, and the best part is, the person you got the quest from to dispense quests then sends you to clean up after them. A day in the life of a hero in Azeroth.

Just. The text for this quest. The quest text, the progress text, the item flavour text, the turn in text, one of the rewards, everything. Perfection.

Heroes of the Horde! – Just… what a quest. What started out as helping a truly moronic orc not drown turned into one of the most emotional quests in the level 1-60 range. You truly are a hero of the Horde. RIP Kingslayer Orkus of <Red Like My Rage>. He also shows up riding Kasha when your character is dead, which is a very touching detail. You hit the nail on the head with this one, Blizz.

And, for everyone who’s against the Forsaken’s efforts in Hillsbrad, there’s this one for you: Matters of Loyalty. Drek’Thar himself, blind and in a wheelchair, coming out to berate your character for their misdeeds, and finishing it with “Yes… I have done terrible things, but nothing could ever be as terrible as lending aid to the Forsaken.” Honestly everything that I’ve ever wanted from the Frostwolf’s resident shaman and elder.

Aside from all this, Hillsbrad is a beautiful zone, and has some incredible quests in it. I urge everyone to give it a second chance: you may just enjoy it in the end.

…until you’ve quested in Ghostlands and you aren’t allowed to die. For you see, there are not one, not two, not three, but four elite quest mobs throughout the zone. Kel’Gash the Wicked is an easy kill, but the other three. Whoo, boy.

For those of you who haven’t quested in Ghostlands, Knucklerot and Luzran are level 21 elite abominations: Luzran wanders up and down the Dead Scar, while Knucklerot travels on the road from Windrunner Village to the Howling Ziggurat. They also do buttloads of damage, and as you can see, their paths can cross. Leveling in there as a level 17 druid was terrifying – I even ended up Hearthstoning out of each ziggurat out of fear. There is also a rare spawn, Dr. Whitherlimb, who can spawn in either the Bleeding or Howling Ziggurats, or in a number of locations in Deathholme. I jumped about a foot in the air when SilverDragon went off outside the Ziggurat (paranoia from abominations is the worst XD)

As if they weren’t enough, there is still another elite quest mob: Dar’Khan Drathir. A traitorous blood (high?) elf, located in the city of Deathholme. Also a level 21 elite, he takes a lot of damage before he really gets hurt. He also deals a lot of damage, and has a fear that can send you right into as many as 4 groups of hostile mobs. Thankfully, I cleared out two of them, and he didn’t fear me into the others.

While fighting Dar’Khan, I realized something that I took for granted on my main druids: Natural Insight. This is a passive ability gained at level 10 for Balance and Restoration druids, which increases your mana pool by 400%. I tend to go in cat form for questing, so I didn’t really notice it, but wow. I soloed Dar’Khan in cat and only went out to heal myself, and I ended up running out of mana – from about 8 or 9 casts of Rejuvenation. That’s crazy!

By the way, I soloed Kel’Gash at level 20, Knucklerot and Luzran at 21, and Dar’Khan at 22. Which, of course, is the point of this post:

My dear, sweet, precious Mora has now passed her second milestone: level 20! Hoping to get her to 90 before Warlords, but we’ll see how things go.